First Lord's Fury

CHAPTER 26

Sir Ehren sat beside the driver of the supply wagon. Though the causeways were smooth, all in all, once enough speed and momentum had been gathered, he felt sure that every single divot and crack in the road’s surface would hammer directly through the wagon’s structure and into his rear end and lower back. Though the unseasonable chill of the past several days had ended, it had been replaced by steady, relentless rain.

He looked back over his shoulder at two hundred and fourteen wagons like the one he currently endured. Most of them were barely half-full, if not completely empty. Beyond the wagons trudged refugees from Riva, many of them taken sick because of the rain and the lack of food and shelter. Legions marched ahead of them and behind, though individually the legionares were little better off than the civilians.

Combat continued at the rear of the column, where Antillus Raucus had taken command of the defense. Great thumping bursts of basso sound marked Aleran firecraftings. Lightning frequently crackled down from the weeping skies, always to strike along their backtrail. The least-battered Legions took turns at breaking up the enemy’s momentum, supported by the weary cavalry. Wounded men were brought up from the rear and handed to overworked healers in their medical wagons. Several of the empty supply wagons had already been filled with the wounded who could not walk for themselves.

Ehren looked back ahead of them, to the Phrygian Legion marching in the vanguard. Just behind them came the command group of the highest-ranking Citizens, including the covered wagon bearing the wounded Princeps Attis. Technically, he supposed he could always go up to the Princeps and report in person on the status of the supplies. If that happened to get him out of the bloody rain for a few moments, it would be a happy coincidence.

Ehren sighed. It had been a perfectly fine rationalization, but his place was at the head of the supply column. Besides, it was better that Attis had as few reminders of Ehren ex Cursori as possible.

“How much farther, do you think?” Ehren asked the teamster beside him.

“Bit,” the man said laconically. He had a broad-brimmed hat that shed rain like the roof of a small building.

“A bit,” Ehren said.

The teamster nodded. He had a waterproofed cloak as well. “Bit. And a mite.”

Ehren eyed the man steadily for a moment, then sighed, and said, “Thank you.”

“Welcome.”

Running horses approached, their hooves a drum of muffled thunder. Ehren looked back to see Count and Countess Calderon riding toward him. The Count had a bandage on his head, and one side of his face was so deeply bruised that it looked like a frenzied clothier had dyed his skin to complement a particularly virulent shade of purple. The Countess bore a number of smaller, lighter marks, souvenirs of the battle with the former High Lady of Aquitaine.

She and her husband reined in as their horses drew even with Ehren’s wagon. “Sir Ehren.”

“Countess.”

“You look like a drowned rat,” she said, giving him a faint grin.

“Drowned rat would be a step up,” Ehren said, and sneezed violently. “Feh. How can I help you?”

Amara frowned. “Have you heard anything about Isana?”

Ehren shook his head gravely. “I’m sorry. There’s been no word.”

Count Calderon’s expression turned bleak at this, and he looked away.

“Your Excellency,” Ehren said, “in my opinion, there is every reason to believe that she is still alive.”

Count Calderon frowned, without looking back. “Why?” He spoke between clenched teeth. Ehren winced in sympathy. The Count’s swollen jaw obviously made it painful for him to speak.

“Well… because she was abducted to begin with, sir. If the vord wanted her dead, there was no reason for them to go to the trouble to arrange a covert entry into a secured building. They would have killed her on the spot.”

Count Calderon grunted, frowned, and looked at Amara.

She nodded to him and passed along the question she could evidently see in his face. “Why would they want her alive, Sir Ehren?”

Ehren winced and shook his head. “We have no way to know that. But the vord went to a lot of trouble to secure her. We can hope that she is valuable enough to the enemy that they will not have harmed her. At least, not yet. There’s hope, sir.”

“I’ve seen what the vord do to those they take alive,” Calderon growled, the words angry and hardly intelligible. “Tell me that my sister is alive and in the hands of those things…”

Amara sighed. “Bernard, please.”

The Count looked back at her. He nodded once and pulled on his horse’s reins, guiding the beast a few paces away. He stood with his back to them.

Amara bit on her lower lip for a few seconds. Then she turned to Ehren, her composure regained. “Thank you, Sir Ehren,” she said, “for trying. We need to speak to Princeps Attis.”

Ehren chewed on his lower lip. “I’m not sure… he’s seeing any visitors.”

“He’s seeing us,” Bernard said roughly. “Now.”

Ehren arched an eyebrow. “Ah?”

“Before we arrive, we need to discuss in detail how best to employ the defenses of the Valley,” Amara said. “No one knows them better than we do.”

Ehren wiped rain out of his eyes and raked his hair back on his head. “That seems reasonable enough to me. I’ll ask him. I can’t promise anything.”

“Please,” Amara said.

Ehren nodded to her, then swung down from the wagon and ran ahead, toward the command group. It was not difficult. The entire group could travel no faster than its slowest members, and as a consequence they hadn’t been pushing half as fast as a Legion on the move. Half a dozen singulares recognized him on sight, and one of them waved him past the invisible barrier their presence represented.

Ehren knocked on the rear door to the covered wagon, still jogging to keep up. Lady Placida opened the door a moment later and offered Ehren her hand. He took it and clambered up into the wagon. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“It was no trouble, Sir Ehren.”

Ehren’s glanced past her, to where a nearly motionless form lay on a rough mattress beneath a wool blanket. “How is he?”

Lady Placida grimaced. “Not well. I was able to restore some of the proper blood flow, but… with cauterization like that, there are limits. He’s well beyond them.”

Ehren’s stomach twisted. “He’s dying.”

“He’s also lying right here, listening to you,” came Attis’s voice, weak and amused. “I’d ask you to quit speaking over my head, but in my current condition you have little choice.”

Ehren tried to smile. “Ah. Apologies, Your Highness.”

“What Aria means to tell you,” Attis said, “is that the backstabbing bitch filleted me. The lower half of my body has been sliced open from groin to ribs. My guts are an unholy mess and will doubtless begin to stink in short order. My heart is laboring too hard because apparently being bisected does terrible things to one’s blood pressure. The injuries are too severe and extensive to be healed.

“I can’t eat anything. Without all the proper tubes in my belly, the food would simply rot in any case. I can drink a little, which means that I will die of starvation a few weeks from now instead of from thirst a few days from now. Unless, of course, an infection takes me first, which seems likely.”

Ehren blinked several times at that. “Y-your Highness. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“There’s hardly a need for you to apologize, Cursor. Life ends. You can hardly blame yourself for that.”

Ehren regarded him for a moment, then lowered his eyes and nodded. “Yes, Your Highness. Are… are you in pain?”

Attis shook his head. “I am managing it for now.”

“Maybe you should rest.”

“I’ll have a vast surplus of rest, presently. For now, I have a duty to perform.”

“Your Highness,” Ehren protested. “You are in no condition—”

Attis waved a dismissive hand. “I am in no condition to fight. But in a conflict of this scale, I will contribute the most to our cause by coordinating the efforts of others and determining sound courses of action. I can do that very nearly as well from this wagon as I can from my horse.”

Ehren frowned and glanced up at Lady Placida.

She shrugged one shoulder. “Provided his thoughts remain clear, I believe he is correct. He’s the best we have when it comes to tactical and strategic decisions, his staff are already in place, and his structure and methods are already established. We should use him.”

Are you sure you didn’t mean, “use him up,” Your Grace? Ehren thought. There is little love lost between you.

Not that Ehren had any right to be casting stones. He inhaled deeply and guarded his tongue. “I… see. Your Highness, Count and Countess Calderon came to me. They urgently request that you meet with them to discuss how best to utilize the Calderon Valley’s defenses.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Attis murmured. “Yes, I suppose they’re right. Please send them to me, Sir Ehren.”

Ehren bowed his head. “As you wish.”

One of the legionares in the rear guard collapsed when the long column of refugees and soldiers were within sight of the entrance to the Calderon Valley. Instantly, vord warriors rushed into the break in the Aleran defenses, not pausing to attack. They only pushed ahead, bringing ever more of their numbers into the weak point of the broken Aleran line.

Ehren realized what had happened when he heard refugees begin to scream.

He stood up on the wagon’s seat and stared back behind them. They were currently moving up a gentle grade, and he could clearly see the mantislike warrior forms plunging left and right through the column, scythe-arms whipping about to sprinkle blood and death on the defenders. Horns called wildly. Legionares marching on the column’s flanks formed up to engage the enemy.

The vord were not executing their typical, gruesomely enthusiastic assault. They never stopped moving, even when they struck a badly aimed blow. Casualties were far lighter than they might have been—but the sheer, screaming presence of the creatures among the refugees was doing something far more deadly. Terrified refugees scattered, racing for the shelter of the tree line.

Horns cried out in answer from the vanguard, and High Lord Phrygius turned his Legion in its tracks to begin marching double time back to the battle. An instant later, several forms leapt skyward from the command tent. Ehren thought he recognized the Placidas, old Cereus, and a figure that might well have been Countess Amara. The High Lords and Lady went west. The lone flier turned east, and shot off like an arrow from the bow.

“Rally!” Ehren cried. “Sound the rally here! Get those people out of the forest!”

The teamster on the cart fumbled with his bullhorn for a moment, then lifted it to his mouth and blew three long, surprisingly mellifluous notes, before pausing and repeating the process. The wagons immediately began hurrying to catch up with Ehren, forming into a double column to compact them into as little space as possible as the First Phrygian went by. Once they were clear, Ehren and his driver completed the maneuver, the carts peeling off from the road and forming an enormous circle, a makeshift fortress of dubious wooden walls.

Refugees had been repeatedly instructed how to react to a given horn signal, in the event of a moment just such as this. It had probably done a minimal amount of good. Even perfectly simple tasks were sometimes difficult or impossible under the conditions of an actual life-threatening situation. It was why soldiers trained and drilled endlessly—so that when they were numb with terror, they could, nonetheless, do everything they needed to do.

Once the wagons had stopped, the teamster sounded the rally call again on his horn. Some of the nearest refugees cried out and ran for the dubious shelter of the circled wagons. Others saw them and followed. Ehren supposed it was even possible that some of them had understood the signal. He saw dozens of the refugees who had run for the trees come running back. Some, but not all of them. Ehren shivered. Anyone who believed that the forest would provide any haven from the vord was going to be rudely surprised. He had already seen at least a dozen mantis warriors go gliding into the trees.

The Legions and the vord hammered at one another, while Citizens and vordknights streaked back and forth overhead in the rain. Drums rumbled, and men died. The Aleran order of battle had been swallowed by pure chaos, but the vord seemed to have no such difficulty. In absolute terms, the number of warriors they’d slipped through the gap in the Legion lines was not sizeable—but those vord, rushing wildly up and down through the column, had an effect on the Aleran troops entirely disproportionate to their numbers. They shrieked and rushed around, striking randomly as targets presented themselves, panicking men and animals alike.

So many horn signals were blowing that Ehren could not possibly tell one from another, the net result being a meaningless cacophony.

And then Ehren heard the drums.

He had never heard their like before—big, basso, ocean-deep drums whose voices rumbled so low that they were more felt than heard. But if the drums’ voices were strange to him, their tone and rhythm were perfectly clear: Their voices were angry.

Perhaps thirty of the mantis warriors came rushing toward the circled wagons in a cohesive pack, following a trail of screaming refugees who ran in vain toward their fellows. The vord cut them down as they fled, despite the efforts of a mismatched group of horsemen from three different cities’ Legions, who tried to force the vord off the Aleran civilians.

“Spears!” Ehren screamed, and teamsters and carters began tugging spears from their racks on the side of the wagon. They armed themselves, then started passing extras out to any refugee willing to fight, and the ring of wagons suddenly bristled with martial thorns.

The mantis-form vord let out shrieks of eager hunger, and the foremost of them bounded into the air and came with its limbs extended. Ehren got to watch it fall toward him, and only barely had time to brace his spear on the bottom of the wagon, then to crouch down beneath it. The vord came down on the spear, which punched its way through the armor on the creature’s belly and partially emerged from its back. The vord wailed in pain, and its legs thrashed viciously. One scythe plunged through the floor of the wagon. Ehren, crouched down, received several blows against his own shoulders and flanks—and then the teamster let out a bellow and shoved the vord off Ehren and back onto the ground outside the circle of wagons, with Ehren’s spear still thrust through it.

Ehren seized the first weapon that came to hand, a gunnysack loaded with turnips. As another vord attempted to climb onto the wagon, he spun the bag of vegetables and struck hard at the vord’s face. His blow didn’t harm the mantis warrior, but it did distract the creature long enough for the teamster to hit it with a sizeable piece of lumber—in fact, Ehren realized, it was the handle to the wagon’s brakes. The vord reeled back under the blow, shaking its head, stumbling drunkenly on its slender legs.

And the drums grew louder.

Ehren was never sure how much time went by during that desperate struggle in the rain. He noted several hollow squares of legionares, facing outward, with groups of refugees taking shelter behind a wall of muscle and steel. More legionares were on the move, but for the moment, at least, the circled wagons were on their own.

Twice Ehren watched wagon horses panic and break out, trying to escape. The vord brought them down and tore them to pieces. One luckless teamster found himself in the back of the wagon when his horse bolted. The vord made no distinction between him and his draft animal. Half a dozen men were dragged from the wagons. Several smaller mantis warriors rushed forward and under the wagons entirely and tore into the refugees gathered inside, spilling more Aleran blood before they could be brought down.

And all the while, the drums grew louder.

Ehren ripped a sleeve from his shirt and used it to swiftly wrap his teamster’s leg after the man had received a badly bleeding wound. More men had fallen. The screams of terrified children rang shrilly in the air. Ehren took up the broken haft of a spear and used it as a club, striking out at heads and eyes, though he knew the weapon would be useless for anything but a mild deterrent. The vord seized the wagon next to his own and dragged it out of the circle, opening a gap in the frail defensive formation. Ehren screamed in fear and protest, as a detached, calm portion of his mind noted that once the vord were inside the circle, the rest of his life would be numbered in seconds.

And the ground began to shake.

A bestial, massive bellow rose from a basso rumble to a whistling shriek. Ehren whipped his head around in time to see a large black gargant crash into the vord attacking the circled wagons. The beast was a monster, even for its breed, the top of its hunched back standing at least twelve feet above the ground. Its stocky, rather squat body was vaguely reminiscent of its cousin, the common badger, though its thick neck and broad head clearly distinguished it from the far smaller beast, especially when one considered the three-foot tusks thrusting forward and curving slightly up from the gargant’s jaw.

This particular beast was a battle-scarred old brute, with the white seams of hair indicating the presence of scars upon the beast’s flesh—a veteran brawler. The swiftest of the vord scattered from the gargant’s path. The slower or less lucky vord did not get clear in time, and the gargant’s hammering paws and sheer mass smashed them to a disgusting, gelatinous paste.

Seated atop the gargant’s enormous back was the largest Marat Ehren had ever seen. His broad shoulders were so heavily sloped with muscle that it almost seemed a deformity. A faded red Aleran tunic looked as though the sleeves had been cut away from it to make room for arms thicker than Ehren’s thighs, and a heavy, braided plait of the same material bound his long hair back from his face. In his right hand he carried a long-handled cudgel, and as Ehren watched, the Marat leaned far over the side of the gargant, clutching a braided leather rope to keep from falling, bracing his feet on the gargant’s flanks like a man climbing down a cliff face on a line. The club swept through the air in a graceful arc, and quite literally knocked a mantis warrior’s head from its chitin-armored shoulders.

“Good day!” boomed the Marat in cheerful, heavily accented Aleran. A sweep of his club smashed a leaping mantis warrior from the air before it could touch him, then he hauled himself lightly back up onto the gargant’s back. He shouted something and tapped the gargant with the handle of his cudgel, and the beast bellowed again, batting another vord away from the wagons with its clawed paws.

Ehren stared, stunned.

The huge black gargant and his rider had not come alone.

There were at least a thousand of the great creatures within sight, and more coming down the causeway from the Calderon Valley, each bearing one or more Marat riders. They smashed through the vord that had penetrated the Aleran lines like a stone hurtling through a spider’s web. The noise was indescribable, as was the heavy, musky odor of gargant on the air. The beasts went by like a thunderstorm, like a tide of muscle and bone, leaving smashed and broken vord scattered over the earth.

There was a howl of wind, and Countess Calderon streaked by no more than twenty feet from the ground, rushing along the trail of destruction left by the lead gargant and his iron-thewed rider. The hem of her cloak snapped and cracked like a dozen whips in the speed of her passage. She vanished as rapidly as she had appeared.

Ehren found himself standing over the wounded teamster, makeshift club in hand, panting for breath, his ears ringing. The world suddenly seemed to be a very quiet place.

“What…” The teamster coughed. “What just happened?”

Ehren stared dazedly back down the road to the west, toward the main body of the troops, where the angry bugling of the gargants drowned out all other sound. Several pockets of humanity remained along his line of sight, where desperate refugees had banded together to pit their inadequate furies against the foe, and where legionares had formed a shield around groups of civilians and withstood the onslaught. There were many dead and wounded on the ground.

But there wasn’t a living vord warrior in sight.

“Doroga,” Ehren breathed. “That was Clan-Head Doroga. Must have been.” He turned to the teamster and began to more thoroughly see to the man’s leg. “I think we just got reinforcements.”